Friday, March 24, 2017

The fast paced story evolving earlier this week after a Congressional Intelligence Committee hearing where the FBI and NSA Directors appeared is exploding with reports of "smoking gun" evidence of spying on the president-elect and his transition team.

Using FISA warrants, the initial intercepts legally approved led to an untold number of intelligence reports - "unmasking" - revealing actual names of American citizens on the transition team - a felony for each instance with criminal penalties of up to ten years in prison per instance. The law requires American names be protected in any foreign intelligence surveillance unless it sees senior intelligence approvals otherwise. An unknown number of names were kept in the reports and allegedly then widely circulated in the intelligence community.

The same report also states the surveillance of the Trump transition team came to light prior to President Trump's tweets on March 4th accusing then President Obama of "wiretapping" him leading into the November election.

The report further states the volume of materials uncovered will need additional days to fully assess. The Congressional Intelligence Committee is set to meet again on Tuesday.

In one of his final acts of office, former President Obama vastly broadened the dissemination of raw intelligence reports. Days before President Trump's inauguration, the Guardian, a UK publication reported:

The ACLU and other Fourth Amendment constitutionalists have repeatedly warned about the potential for abuse using the FISA laws for purely political purposes. The ACLU however has not commented on the recent disclosures thus far.

The chair of the Congressional Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes has invited people with information on any illicit spying activities of Americans to submit the information to the congressional investigation.

It's unknown which whistleblowers are behind the pending revelations expected to reach the Congressional Intelligence Committee as soon as today. Reports claim the NSA is cooperating providing supporting documentation but to date the FBI has ignored all such requests made by the Congressional oversight committee.

One alleged whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery who worked at the highest levels of the NSA and CIA, turned over a gargantuan millions of documents: 47 hard drives and 600 million pages.

In interviews with the FBI alleging massive illegal spying, Montgomery is said to have turned over the materials and sought whistleblower status. Freedom Watch submitted a letter to Rep. Nunes earlier this month on his behalf as seen below.

Among the allegations collected are claims of illegal spying on: the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, other Supreme Court judges, another 156 judges and high profile business people including Donald Trump.

Rep. Nunes has not indicated who or how many whistleblowers provided dozens of reports pointing to the domestic spying on President Trump's transition team or how many are "unmasked" in the reports.

President Trump's early conversations with foreign leaders from Mexico and Australia were reported "leaked" to the press. Suggestions are conversations as president-elect were fodder for surveillance including Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who received an early invitation and came to the White House during President Trump's first month in office.

Talking Ed Note: These are serious Constitutional matters involving the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment and basic American freedoms.

Much of the corporate media are focused on covering up and distracting from the emerging evidence of a potential scandal dwarfing Watergate. About a half dozen corporate entities control most US media outlets, print and television.

Update: 11:30/12:40 - The next scheduled intel investigation hearing will see both the NSA and FBI Directors called back to testify in a closed session. The attorney for Paul Manafort, who was the campaign chairman for the Trump campaign for several months offered to have his client testify. Former campaign manager Roger Stone who briefly worked on the Trump campaign has publicly demanded to testify.

It's unclear if any whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery alleged as one, will be testifying in any closed session. Rep. Devin Nunes, the chair of the intel committee has declined to publicly identify any sources.

Nunes did say, "We have people that continue to come forward to provide us information."